


Break the Cycle

by Hagar, SailorSol



Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Family, Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Manipulation, Families of Choice, Family, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Grief, M/M, PTSD, Siblings, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-15
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorSol/pseuds/SailorSol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hopeverse (family AU). You need to find all the pieces before you can start putting them together. Enough had happened that, for the Gibbs-Mallard family, this seems like a nearly impossible task.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Play

**Author's Note:**

> Next up in [Hopeverse](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hopencis) (family AU), follows after [Shattered Skies, Part 3: Spirals](http://archiveofourown.org/works/210174/chapters/332815).
> 
>  **Warnings** : emotional abuse, dissociation, suicidal ideation, dissociation, depictions of depression, grief, some swearing, general messed-up-ness

Jethro had last been to the David house nearly three years before. It wasn’t a big house, unless one took into account that only two people lived there, one of whom barely came there to sleep and the other had not actually _lived_ in that house since Gibbs had been there last. The clean-lined modern structure could be a nice house, if someone had decorated it who cared for the feeling of homeliness.

 _And if,_ Jethro thought as he stepped under the crime scene tape, _it wasn’t so obviously the scene of a shoot-out._ Metro PD had put their tape at the garden gate, which Jethro appreciated. It kept the yard and the house neighbour-free. Walking up the path to the house Jethro could see some EMTs on the front porch. They did not seem too busy, going through the motions without any intensity. While that was usually a bad sign, this time Jethro took it to mean that the ‘bangers Ziva had mentioned over the phone were dead before the medics got to them.

Good.

There was another cop at the door. Jethro flashed his badge, and the man stepped aside and let him in. Inside, the house had been trashed. The signs of automatic fire on the front door and some of the walls were incongruous with the minimalist interior. And there, in the living room, directly across from him, were Tony and Ziva, sitting on the couch with a cop hovering next to them.

Tony looked like hell. There was a glass of water and a bottle of Advil on the coffee table, and Ziva was holding an ice pack to his neck. Jethro did not like the angle at which he held his broken arm, clutched against his chest. The kid tried to stand as Jethro approached the couch, but first Ziva grabbed his sleeve and then Jethro put his hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down.

Gently. Tony was shivering.

He sat down on Tony’s other side without taking his hand off. Tony was pale, and where Ziva was holding that pack was bad news, but there were no new bruises that Jethro could see - yet - and nothing new seemed to be broken. He sat straight and seemed alert - more alert than he had been since the latest batch of shit had hit the fan, really.

“Are you all right?” Jethro asked.

“Yeah,” he replied, nodding his head just a little before realizing that must have been a bad idea.

Jethro considered him again, and then his gaze slid behind Tony, to Ziva. She was entirely too pale, too.

She nodded once, curtly. “There will be more bruises,” she said. “And that arm may need to be checked again.”

Ten days before, Jethro wouldn’t have thought to doubt Ziva’s word on the matter. Sitting on her father’s couch in plain view of the third dead ‘banger on the kitchen floor, the tattoos of said ‘banger clearly visible, Jethro did not feel as trusting.

Would have felt less trusting, if he wasn’t so bone-deep tired that that was merely an intellectual concern, for the time being.

“What about you?” he asked.

“Uninjured,” she said shortly. Her gaze had dropped there, for a second, and that implied something Jethro still hoped would be untrue, for all that each new development belied that hope.

Ducky had not commented on it, but the ER physicians had: the bruises on Tony’s cheek could have been the mark of a small hand, a girl’s hand.

“C’mere,” he said abruptly, and pulled his boy into a hug.

He would’ve held on to Tony until he relaxed his tense posture and stopped shivering but there were voices in the doorway, voices coming into the house, and one of those was a voice that Jethro knew well. Jenny’s voice, unlike the rest of her, did not show the damage her illness had left in its wake.

He stood up, hand still on Tony’s shoulder, and willed his body to tell anyone who would be looking: _hurt them - so much as upset them - and you answer to me._

“Jethro,” Jenny said from the doorway. She’d gained some weight, since she had returned to her own team, but she was still skeletal-thin and her hair had not properly grown back, yet. Jethro knew that her skin might never regain its previous youth.

She seemed frail, old and frail, but he would still not let himself feel sorry for her. “Agent Shepard.”

If the formality stung, she didn’t show it. Some emotion passed across her face, but Jethro did not trust himself to name it.

“Langer,” she said.

“Yes, Boss,” the lanky man said, stepping back from his examination of the bullet holes.

“Get their statements.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“Jardin, bodies.”

“But, Boss...”

Jethro tuned them out and resumed his perch on the couch, glaring at Langer as the man sat down on the armchair across and flipped through his notepad. Jethro would give him that: the man didn’t even think to question whether Jethro should be there for the statements, by protocol.

Ziva was still sitting too straight, though, and Tony was still shivering. Jethro settled himself to listen to what would surely be a creative reinterpretation of the truth, determined not to interrupt unless Langer pushed too hard.

* * *

The noise from the party floated around them, distorted and distant like gunfire. “Alright, let’s go, outside,” Tony ordered, reaching for Ziva. Kate glided towards the door. She said something, but he couldn’t read her lips and he couldn’t quite hear her. He had his arm around Ziva’s shoulder, anyway, trying to get her to the door and to the other side.

They had to go home. He had to get them home.

A car driving by, too slow. More gunfire, the flash lighting up the faces of the two people in the car, a man and a girl, dark eyes in gaunt faces and thin mouths pulled in twin, triumphant smirks. The car was slow but Tony was even slower, until Kate hit the ground. He couldn’t hear her, couldn’t hear his own scream over the gunfire - still the gunfire - gunfire still when Kate had already hit the ground and her blood was on Tony’s hands.

Her blood on his face, too, warm and not yet sticky. Blood-soaked shirt, two entrance wounds, one on the left of her chest. There was a gun in Tony’s hand. Tony stared at it blankly, but then he heard Ari’s laughter behind him and he turned. He couldn’t see Ari, though. Ziva was the only one there, and she was the one laughing.

“It’s all your fault,” she said, but that was wrong, that was the wrong voice, it was Kate’s voice. Tony looked down at Kate and found her looking up at him.

“It’s your fault,” she said. She reached up for him but the hands were Ziva’s hands and Tony was on his back, struggling to breathe, and the last thing he could see before everything turned dark was Ari’s eyes laughing at him from Kate’s face.

Everything turned dark, and then he was looking at a strange, flat surface. He could breathe, but he couldn’t move. It took several seconds to realize that he was looking at his own room’s ceiling, that he was tangled in his blankets rather than tied down and that the only thing keeping him from moving was the ghost of dream paralysis.

Kate’s voice continued to echo in his mind. _It’s your fault_ , she’d said. _All your fault_. He worked his way free from the offending blankets with unsteady hands, heart still hammering in his chest. He pushed himself out of bed, intending to just get a glass of water from the bathroom, but his feet carried him to Ziva’s room instead.

He stared into the darkness, trying to make out the shape on the bed, wondering whose face would look back at him. The bundle on the bed did not even stir before sitting up in one fluid motion, dark hair falling halfway down her back. He couldn’t see her face in the dim half-light filtering in around the window blinds. Just the eyes, peering out at him.

“Get over here,” she said. The voice was pitched low, too rough to be called a whisper. She leaned forward and patted the empty space on her bed once before leaning back again.

He hesitated, wondering if he was still asleep. A moment later and still undecided he was padding across the room - _Kate’s room_ \- the carpet plush against his feet but nothing for him to see but her, and nothing for him to hear. Maybe he wanted to run, run far away from this, but he couldn’t. He never took his eyes off her as his body walked across the room and sat down where she’d indicated, the mattress barely sinking under his weight. This close it was Ziva’s bushy curls and Ziva’s features, Ziva’s body and the set of Ziva’s shoulders. He had no idea whether or not he was relieved.

She lifted her arm, something in her hand catching the sliver of light and reflecting it. The metal was cool and sharp against the skin of his neck. Tony glanced down at the familiar blade and then back, at its chain wrapped around her wrist and up at her face. He couldn’t read her expression at all, could barely see it in the deep shadows. Couldn’t see whose eyes regarded him.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, though it sounded distant even to his own ears, like something still in a dream.

“It’s all right,” she said. She, at least, sounded like Ziva. Well, mostly. The tone of voice was wrong, no steel in it. The knife shifted against his skin, the flat instead of the edge, like a familiar caress.

He wanted to reach out and touch her, feel the steady pulse under her skin. She was so close. He was too afraid that it wouldn’t be there, though, that she wasn’t, that if he’d dare to touch her everything would fracture in darkness and gunfire again.

“Go to sleep, Tony,” she said. She sounded slightly exasperated, as she often had with him. “Try to stay that way until morning. I’ll still be here, and you had better be too.”

“Right,” he said, waiting for her to move the knife.

He didn’t have to wait at all: it was gone as soon as the single syllable was done falling from his lips. She replaced it under her pillow without looking away from him. He sat for a moment longer, still trying to search her face out of the darkness, but her features remained constant. It itched at him as he made his way to the door, his legs feeling slightly more like his own, this time, but he was too terrified that if he turned around he would see Kate, or no one at all.

* * *

Three hours after dinner, most normal families would be winding down for the night and going to sleep. The Gibbs-Mallard family was definitely not most families, and probably not normal. No one appeared to have any intention of going to bed any time soon. Pa was in the basement, which was roughly as surprising as it being dark at night. Dad had disappeared upstairs with yet another book some time earlier. Abby and Tim took over the living room, with its wall-sized television, and by the sound of it were holding yet another Lord of the Rings marathon. Ziva was right in front of him, sitting at the kitchen table and doing what appeared to be math homework, judging by her frequent calculator use; her glances up at Tony were just as frequent.

As for Tony, he was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall right next to the basement door. Dad would’ve given him the mother of all lectures if he’d seen it, but Dad had already gone to bed. It was seriously uncomfortable, sitting there, and Tony would need a couple extra Advils later, but he didn’t care. Ziva could see him where he was and Pa couldn’t. That’s what mattered.

The tile was cold and hard. There was also something cold and hard inside Tony’s head, an empty space where something else used to be. Tony couldn’t remember what that was. It was clearer like this, sitting on the outside of the basement door, desperately wishing for the courage to sit at the top of the basement stairs instead. At the top of the stairs, where Pa could see him; where Pa could see him and tell him to come down there already. Tony wasn’t ten, anymore, though, shaken from a nightmare and standing by the strange man’s lair, wondering what he’d do if Tony invaded. Pa was strange again, however, or perhaps Tony was, and he wasn’t sure what he’d do if he put himself on the other side of that door, and Pa didn’t look up and call him down.

As if she could read his thoughts - which, hell, sometimes he would swear she could - Ziva glanced up at him again.

Tony sighed and pushed himself off the ground. “Need help with your homework?” he offered.

* * *

Tony had gone under Ziva’s bed again. It was stuffy, and crawling under there with one hand still in a cast was far from easy. But no one would bother him while he was there; Ziva would make sure of that.

 _I killed him_ , she had said, and Tony knew that hadn’t been an exaggeration. He didn’t blame Pa for covering that part up, but his stomach still twisted with the knowledge that Ziva’s brother had killed Kate.

But Ziva had killed Ari, right here in their house. She’d been thirteen, and he hadn’t left her any other choice.

She had been right to call Tony a coward. He couldn’t kill himself, and by asking her to do it for him, he had put her right back at the top of the basement stairs.

He was no different than Ari.

The thought had lodged itself in his head like a bullet, a sharp flare of pain and then numbness. At least, that’s how he imagined it must feel, the barrel of a gun cool and hard against his temple. That night at her father’s house, Ziva had been the gun.

Tony still hadn’t pulled the trigger.

He wanted to talk to her, apologize for being the same as Ari, but the words still wouldn’t come, sticking in his throat and suffocating him with the crush of body-warm steel against his windpipe; he could almost pretend it was because the air under the bed was thick and dusty. Almost.

The knock on Ziva’s doorframe startled Tony from his thoughts; Ziva apparently wasn’t as surprised, as the bed didn’t even shift above him.

“We need to talk,” he heard Abby say; she probably had her hands on her hips, judging by that tone of her voice, but Tony didn’t feel like looking for himself.

“If you say so,” said Ziva. That wasn’t a good tone of voice either, the thin layer of fake agreement. “What do we need to talk about?”

“Tony,” Abby replied. Tony resisted the temptation to bang his head on the floor. Drawing attention to himself was the last thing that would do if he wanted to know what his sister had to say about him to Ziva.

“Don’t stand in the doorway,” Ziva said after too-long seconds.

He heard Abby move farther into Ziva’s room so she was standing closer to the end of the bed. She probably had her arms crossed, now, and a distant part of Tony’s brain started taking odds on which one of them would pounce first. He still hadn’t decided when Abby spoke again.

“Whatever’s going on between you and Tony needs to stop.” Abby’s words were sharp, authoritative. “He’s not your puppet to jerk around on its strings, you know. He’s a _person_.”

The urge to bang his head against the floor returned. He wasn’t terribly surprised by Abby’s current actions, but she obviously didn’t understand what was going on. Especially if she’d confronted Ziva and not him.

“I would tell you to go get a clue,” Ziva snapped, “but if you were capable of that, you would not be standing here saying these childish things.”

“I’m not the one without a clue here,” Abby snapped back.

“Explain,” Ziva said.

Tony flinched. That was the Pa Voice.

“You are _not_ allowed to use that tone of voice on me,” Abby replied sharply. Tony wasn’t sure he’d ever heard his sister that angry before. “And you _will_ let Tony see Pa.”

“They see each other all the time,” Ziva said, sounding equal parts disgusted and bewildered. “And I have certainly not _forbidden_ Tony anything. What he does or does not do is his choice, and you have no place second-guessing him.”

He should do something. Abby and Ziva were still tenuous at the best of times, and this was pretty damn far from that. Abby was probably wearing those spiked cuffs of hers, and Ziva still wore that damn knife around her neck - not that she needed it. This could get ugly. He knew that, but he couldn’t will himself to move.

“You barely even let him go to the bathroom by himself, and you’re accusing _me_ of second-guessing him? Who do you think you are?” Abby demanded.

“I think I am not a stupid, spoiled brat who thinks she’s so much holier than anyone else!”

Tony couldn’t stay hidden any longer. “Knock it off, both of you,” he snapped, sliding out from under the bed and onto his feet, back straight and shoulders squared. He was surprised at how much authority was in his voice, how much _he_ sounded like Pa, but he wasn’t about to doubt that. He’d need every ounce of authority he could get in order to stop this from becoming a complete disaster.

Abby startled, eyes wide in shock. “Tony! What were you doing under Ziva’s bed?”

Tony glanced towards Ziva to make sure she wasn’t armed before he replied to Abby’s incredulous question. “Feeding the dust bunnies,” he said flippantly.

Abby’s eyes widened more before narrowing in a glare directed at Ziva. “You stay away from Tony,” she shot at Ziva even as she reached for Tony’s elbow. Tony took half a step back from her, giving Ziva a warning look before addressing Abby.

“Stop it,” he ordered. “Ziva isn’t making me do anything or stopping me from doing anything.” He softened his tone. “I appreciate your concern, Abs, I really do.” He stepped forward again and pulled Abby into a hug.

It took her a moment to wrap her arms around him in return, squeezing tightly with her face pressed against his shoulder. He’d probably have mascara stains on his shirt, but he would deal with that later. He let her hold on to him for almost a minute before breaking apart.

“Promise she’s not making you do anything you don’t want?” Abby asked, sounding about six years old again.

Tony mustered up a smile for her. “I promise, Abs. Now how about you go make some popcorn and I’ll be down in a minute to watch Stargate with you?”

Abby grinned brightly in return. “You’ve got five minutes,” she said, bouncing out of the room. Tony waited until he could hear her clomping down the stairs before he addressed Ziva. “Don’t do that again,” he said. Thank goodness the Pa Voice was still holding, though it probably wouldn’t for much longer.

“Please turn around?” she asked, sounding oddly hesitant.

He swallowed hard before turning to face her, trying to keep his expression as neutral as possible. She’d put her book away at some earlier point in the confrontation. Her legs had been crossed earlier, he knew, but now they lay in parallel hooks, still ready to leap up. Her shoulders were hunched hard, though, caved in as if she was trying to fold in or hug herself.

He stepped forward and sat down on the edge of her bed. “Hey,” he said, keeping his voice even and gentle. He held his good hand out to her, palm up.

She didn’t take it, instead curling into a ball. “What shouldn’t I do again?” she asked, in an even smaller voice.

Tony’s hand dropped to his lap, and he swallowed hard again. “Abby’s my sister, too,” he said; his voice cracked and his shoulders slumped, and suddenly he was just Tony again, with no strength to back his words.

She untangled the knot of her limbs and leaned forward on her knees, reaching with one hand. Her thumb settled between his collarbones, fingers wrapping around his shoulder. He put his own hand over hers, squeezing gently. Her fingers dug into his flesh in reply, her eyes screwing shut just as tightly.

“I’ll still be here,” she whispered. “Promise you’ll come back.”

He mustered another smile, though this one was more strained than the one he’d given Abby, and said in his best Schwarzenegger voice: “I’ll be back.”

* * *

Nothing good ever came from the doorbell ringing after a certain hour in the evening. That certain hour being closer to eight, rather than eleven. However, eleven at night was the hour at which Fornell made his way to his front door, gun in one hand just in case. Then he peered out the peephole, sighed, put the gun out of sight and opened the door.

“What, Timothy?” he asked.

The boy shifted nervously at the sound of unmasked annoyance in Fornell’s voice. “I, um...”

Fornell kept his face a mask, ignoring the boy’s haggard look. “You what?” he demanded.

“Can I please stay here for the night?” Timothy said, very quickly, words tumbling one on the end of the other.

Fornell bit back a few choice words and considered the kid again. He did not like the size of that backpack. “Are you running away from home?” he asked, suspiciously.

“No.”

“Do your parents know where you are?”

“Not yet.”

Fornell opened his mouth to ask _What do you mean, not **yet?**_ and then realized what the kid was angling for.

“Please, Uncle Tobias,” the kid said, sounding as miserable as he looked and twice as exasperated. “Can I please sleep somewhere without yelling just the one night, please?”

 _Fucking Gibbs-Mallards in the middle of the goddamn night,_ Fornell thought, and stepped aside. “There’s a free couch,” he said. “But first you call your Dad.”

* * *

The door at the top of the stairs was usually closed whenever he was down there. Not locked; the temptation to take a hammer to his own handiwork has passed. It was closed, though, which once upon a time it hadn’t been. That time hadn’t been so long ago, even if it felt that way.

So when the door at the top of the stairs creaked open, Jethro heard it. He didn’t look up, though. Whoever was there, whether or not they came down was their decision. He certainly didn’t keep anyone out.

First there was silence, and then the sound of shuffling feet - too heavy to be Abby’s or Ziva’s - followed by the distinct sound that gave flip-flops their name, one foot and then the other, and then the soft sound of a body sitting down on wooden steps, trying hard to not make a sound and failing.

Jethro meant to put more force into the next hammer strike, but it did not quite work out that way. There was a memory that scratched underneath the many layers of disappointment and frustration, like a dog at a door.

Several hammer strikes later, the same sounds repeated three, four times: _flip_ down a stair or three, then the thud of a body. Then silence, measure in hammer strikes, and then again.

After the fourth iteration Jethro wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his head and said, not bothering to look up: “Have you forgotten how to _walk,_ Tony?”

There was a long moment of silence before Tony replied. “No, sir.”

Jethro froze with his arm poised to strike. He put the hammer down, stepped away from the half-finished boat, looked up at where Tony was sitting on the stairs and looking back at him with about as much defiance as could be surmised, and said: “Then get down here.” Then, without waiting to see what the boy would do, he turned around and strode back to the bench, to pull himself a saw horse to sit on.

Tony’s flip-flops slapped annoyingly loud as he walked down the rest of the stairs. He didn’t take the seat that Jethro had left vacant, though. If that was a stranger, Jethro would have raised his eyebrows at him. As it was, though, he merely waited.

Tony opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. Jethro waited, trying for patience. Whatever the boy intended to say, though, all that came out was: “Pa.”

Jethro jerked, involuntarily. He considered Tony again: circles under his eyes, shadows of bruises still present, one shoulder hitched against the weight of the plaster. He looked sick.

Jethro stood up, pulled out that damn chair, placed it behind Tony and then put both his hands on the boy’s shoulders and pushed him down, careful but brooking no room for argument. The kid felt brittle and tense under his hands, the sense-memory jerking forward the memory that scratched at his mind before.

Tony at ten years old, flinching behind that bright smile. Tony, entirely too surprised that someone had cooked for him. Tony, refusing to let go at night, clinging with all the force of a child terrified of being left behind. Tony, sliding down the stairs one or three at a time, glancing at his new parent out of the corner of his eye, as if gauging whether or not he’ll be hit.

Had it really been that long ago?

That thought did not last even long enough to form into words before being chased down by anger, worn and practiced. Jethro let go and returned to the saw horse, pulling it that much closer before sitting down.

“What is it, Tony?” he asked. He made no effort to regulate his voice. It came out different than it had before, weary and softer for that, if still rough.

“Ziva told me what happened. With her br--with Ari.”

Jethro very nearly stopped breathing, for a second, masking that as a deep breath. He needed that, too. There had been very few times in his life when he had been taken so completely by surprise. “She did,” he said, buying time.

“That she killed him.”

Tony knew _that._ Tony knew who Ari was to Ziva - had to have known before this night - and had not breathed a word of it to anyone. The hairs on Jethro’s neck stood. Something was happening in his house, in his family - something that encompassed this, and the attack at the David house, and Michael Rivkin’s death - and of which Jethro did not know nearly enough.

“She did,” he said, this time in agreement. That voice belonged in the interrogation room, not with his _son,_ but none of this belonged with his family. “When did she tell you?”

“The night I broke my arm,” he said. “At least, that’s when she told me he was her... you know. She told me the rest at her father’s house.”

Jethro would have raised an eyebrow if he wasn’t certain that that would spook Tony, and if he was not interested in this new-found honesty. Tony had previously denied having been with Ziva the night Michael Rivkin was killed.

Jethro had gotten his hands on the Rivkin case file. That scene had been cleaned, and by someone who knew what they were doing.

Tony’s eyes tracked his expression warily.

“What happened that she told you?” he asked, instead of throwing Tony’s lie in his face.

“I followed her after school that day. She didn’t have practice. She was meeting up with a guy.” He paused, swallowing. “Michael Rivkin.”

Most of the scenarios in Jethro’s head collapsed in face of that piece of information. Jethro considered, digested - Tony was a talented liar and his style was the ludicrous, not the understated - but if they were in an interrogation room right now, and Tony was a stranger, Jethro would think that he was telling the truth.

He’d rattle him anyway, just to be sure. Or perhaps feed him more rope.

“Then what happened?” he prompted, as Tony didn’t seem likely to continue on his own.

“I went to his apartment that night.”

 _Oh, God._ Gibbs heart was hammering.

“Just to talk,” Tony continued, words distant through the fear clutching Jethro’s chest, “but... he had a gun, and we struggled.”

Another pause. Then, matter-of-factly, looking Jethro straight in the eye: “I killed him.”

Suspects were rarely calm when they spoke the truth. Often they were agitated, afraid, sometimes even defensive. The calm ones were lying, more often than not. There was a different kind of calm, though: the calm that came from laying oneself bare, from tearing down the defenses one had put up with so much effort, the calm of having nowhere left to hide or run to. That was Tony, looking at his father and quite clearly expecting to be disbelieved.

“You struggled,” Jethro repeated, voice thick. “It was self defence.”

“I pushed my way into his apartment uninvited.”

Jethro shook his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he said firmly. He pushed himself up and put his hands on Tony’s shoulders again, repeating the words that put half the horror scenarios to rest: “Self defence.”

Tony’s eyes tracked Jethro’s face - no, clung to it, full of questions. Then his shoulders sagged under Jethro’s hands, all the fight bled out. His eyes, too, dropped before he said: “She got there just after.”

 _So she cleaned up the scene?_ He nearly asked, but then Tony’s words caught up with him: _She was meeting up with some guy_. And Ziva had fled to her father’s house after whatever had gone down that night.

Fear and anger warred in his head. “What happened?” he asked.

“She... we talked.”

“Talked?” Jethro asked, sharply. “That wasn’t Rivkin’s palm-print on your cheek, Tony.”

Tony tensed under his hands again, eyes glinting with defiance in a body that communicated fear. “If you already know what happened, then why are you bothering to ask?” he asked with a surprising amount of vehemence.

“Why are you lying again?” Jethro demanded.

“What do you want me to say? That she pinned me to the floor and put a knife to my throat?”

The voice registered before the words did. He’d heard that voice before, from battered wives and children who had no reason to trust any adult. It was a voice that spoke of years of pain with no relief in sight, and of a state of mind that had left hopelessness in the rear mirror. It was a good thing that the voice registered first, because the only thing that prevented Jethro from letting go of Tony and storming upstairs in search of Ziva, right that moment, was the knowledge that the girl couldn’t have caused that much damage on her own.

Not in three weeks.

He’d almost asked one question, but then years of habit reinstated themselves, the agent wrenching the reins from the father for just long enough to keep him from getting ahead of himself.

He reached behind him with one foot, hands sliding from Tony’s shoulders to his upper arms for the second it took him to drag the saw horse close enough to sit on. “She was seeing Rivkin,” he repeated. “She put a knife to your throat. What happened next?”

It took Tony a long moment to reply. “She told me about Ari. And then... uh....” His attention turned inwards, or at least the part of it that wasn’t fully fixed on Jethro did. His muscles under Jethro’s hands trembled slightly.

Too many things that did not make sense, too many pieces in the puzzle that didn’t seem to fit. Jethro knew his own reasons for keeping Ziva’s relation to Ari secret, but he could only begin to guess at what made Tony insist he’d fallen down _stairs._ Whatever was going on inside Tony’s head was well beyond Jethro’s interrogation-smarts, and well into the territory of Ducky’s other graduate degree. “Someone cleaned up the scene,” he told his son. “The clothes in which you arrived at the hospital were not your own, and did not have blood on them.”

Tony’s eyes widened, but only a little. Some of that had to sound familiar, then. “They were Ri--Mi--his,” he said.

“Figured as much,” Jethro said, a little wryly. Then he sighed. “That was that night,” he said. He could fill in the blanks without leaning on Tony. “What happened three weeks ago?”

“I went to talk to her. To see if she would come home. We were interrupted.”

Ziva’s dating Rivkin explained what the gang had wanted with the David house. Jethro still distinctly recalled where the bangers’ bodies had fallen, though, as well as where Ziva’s shell casings had been and where the grass by the porch had been flattened where two people came rolling off of it. Ziva had held a knife to Tony’s throat, and cleaned the blood from his hands; she had to have been the one who struck Tony in the neck that night - and there were only so many ways a girl Ziva’s size could get there - and she had been holding the ice pack to it and glaring at the world to stand back by the time Jethro had gotten there.

There was nothing to speak in Ziva’s favor, nothing. Jethro had heard enough, had seen enough. The pieces in the puzzle fit, now. All of them, except one; or, if Jethro followed the path of that domino, two. Everything Tony had just told him suggested a terrifying degree of control on Ziva’s part but, if that was true, it was rather difficult to explain Tony sitting there and spilling all those secrets with no resistance at all.

“Why did you come down here tonight, Tony?” Jethro asked. He sounded weary. Hell, he felt that weary.

“Because Ziva finally made me.”

Jethro nearly snapped at Tony, but it was obvious that Tony could no more lie in that moment then he could fly. “The hell, Tony? Why did she have to _make_ you?”

The words were quiet when they finally came. Quiet, and again in that voice that had long passed despair. “Because I didn’t know if you would ignore me or not.”

It stopped Jethro cold. It cast aside all the careful reconstructions of Ziva’s motives in this. There was only one possible reply to that, only one that was true. Jethro gathered up his son’s trembling body, pulled him in for a hug, and made quiet noises that meant nothing but comfort as Tony’s tears soaked into his shirt.


	2. Replay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content Advisory:** graphical violence and emotional abuse involving teenagers, pyschological trauma (e.g. dissociation, flashbacks), suicidal ideation, various fucked-up-ness and a bunch of swearing.

Tony didn’t really have a plan; at least, nothing more than waiting until dark to go back to the apartment he’d followed Ziva to earlier that day.

Michael Rivkin’s apartment.

It hadn’t taken him long to find the name. Just under an hour of searching news articles from the last two years, digging for more information about the gang Ari had led. Rivkin had been his second in command; Tony recognized him from the mug shot attached to an article about him being arrested for some misdemeanor or another.

Ziva had come home shortly before dinner, hair damp from what she claimed was a post-practice shower. Except she hadn’t gone to practice, and Tony didn’t want to think about what else she might have done that would have necessitated showering. Hopefully, she was just trying to cement her cover story.

She probably suspected something, because she gave him that look of hers, head tilted just slightly to the side, as if she was trying to see right through to his soul. He looked away, returning his focus to the picture now on his computer screen; Kate, a small smile on her lips, dark hair framing her face. It was a school photo, the one attached to her obituary.

He barely touched dinner.

Getting out of the house hadn’t been all that difficult; he’d told Dad he was meeting up with some friends to watch the baseball game on TV. He didn’t tell Dad that his cell phone was still upstairs, and he was only stopping by his friend’s house to borrow his car again.

Ziva, doing her homework at the kitchen table, watched him leave.

By the time he parked his friend’s Impala, he’d at least come to a decision; he would talk to Rivkin, tell him to back off from Ziva. She was only sixteen, after all, and Rivkin was the same age as Tony. Seven years was a big age gap, when one of the people involved was under eighteen.

He wouldn’t let Ziva get hurt the way Kate had.

The apartment building wasn’t locked, and Tony found Rivkin’s name on one of the mailboxes. Apartment 3B. He took the stairs, not trusting the look of the elevator. Plus it gave him a chance to work off some of the nervous tension building in his stomach.

He knocked on the door before he could convince himself this was a bad idea. Again. The door opened less than a minute later. Rivkin had a bottle of beer in one hand, loose at his side.

“Who the hell are you?” Rivkin asked. Tony pushed his way into the apartment before the door could be slammed in his face, close enough to the other man to smell the alcohol on his breath, and then they were both inside, facing each other.

“I’m Ziva’s brother,” Tony introduced himself. Rivkin stared at him for a long moment before laughing. Tony really didn’t think it was amusing, but Rivkin apparently did.

“Bullshit,” Rivkin replied, once he’d stopped laughing. He took another swig of his beer, giving Tony a calculating look that wasn’t dimmed by the drink. “Tony, right? You’re not fat enough to be the one who sits around playing computer games all day.”

Tony glared, doing his best to push down the sudden flare of temper. Rivkin was trying to get a rise out of him, that much was obvious by the smirk on his face. Besides, this guy didn’t know the first thing about Tim. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said as casually as he could manage.

“What brings you to my humble abode, _Tony_?” Rivkin asked, his tone making Tony’s name sound like an insult. He spread his arms wide to take in the small, dingy apartment. Despite the late hour, the only light came from the television, muted in the background. It was enough for Tony to see the threadbare couch, the coffee table covered in old magazines, apparently empty take-out cartons, and at least a dozen beer bottles. He obviously didn’t care about picking up after himself.

Tony tried to keep his disgust off his face, though he probably failed. “Ziva,” he replied to Rivkin’s question.

Rivkin laughed at him again. “Feisty little thing, isn’t she? Like a tiger in the sack, let me tell you. I bet you want a piece of that, don’t you?”

The anger was too raw, too red for Tony to temper. He launched himself across the short distance, tackling Rivkin to the floor, before he even knew what he was doing. Taken by surprise, Rivkin had let go of his beer, the bottle rolling to the side. That was lucky for Tony as the next second Rivkin reacted, punching Tony’s jaw. He only had so much leverage, though, pressed against the floor as he was. Tony saw stars but that did not stop him from grabbing Rivkin by his shirt and slamming him down against the floor, hard, the man’s head sounding a satisfying smack against the floor.

“Don’t you dare talk about her like that,” Tony snarled. Rivkin blinked up at him, momentarily stunned.

That didn’t last long, though. Perhaps Rivkin had drank enough that the alcohol dimmed the pain, and perhaps he was simply that much more used to brawling. Tony barely registered the other man move before Rivkin had already trapped Tony’s arm with both of his own, twisting to break Tony’s hold and - by the sudden, blinding flair of agony - probably bone also. The next moment Rivkin was the one on top, sitting on Tony’s stomach with one hand pressed against his throat and the other pointing a gun at his head.

“You come into my apartment and attack me,” Rivkin said, panting. “I can kill you right now and be completely justified.” He grinned down at Tony, leaning close to Tony’s face, moving the gun aside in the process. “What would dear old dad think of that?”

There wasn’t time enough for Tony’s sad, pathetic life to flash before his eyes. Tony could only barely breathe, and his arm was still burning with pain. There was nothing to stop Rivkin from pulling that trigger, no reason for him to not do it but intoxication and the thrill. If that was what chance he had, then Tony would take it. He locked eyes with Rivkin, praying the moment would hold, even as he groped with his right hand, searching madly. His fingers found the cool glass of a beer bottle: perhaps the one Rivkin had dropped earlier, perhaps one of the dozen left about the place. Not that it mattered. Tony brought his arm up, smashing the bottle against Rivkin’s head. The glass shattered, not that Tony could hear it over the single gunshot. He saw the flash, heard the sound - his ears were ringing, the left one feeling suddenly full of fluid - but he could move, could use the seconds the bottle-strike had bought him to push Rivkin off of him.

It was only a second, though. Rivkin was struggling up even as Tony was, gun pointed at Tony’s chest. Tony grabbed his hand, trying to point the gun away, trying to push himself up and Rivkin down. He made the mistake of leaning on his left arm, though, and the world went grey for a too-long moment. Tony pushed up anyway, not daring to not move, pain or not -

Gunfire, again, twice this time, and something warm on his face, his shirt, but no new pain for Tony. He blinked, panting. When he vision cleared he was lying on his back, Rivkin on top of him, the stench of alcohol in Tony’s face. He reached with his right arm to push Rivkin off. Rivkin was dead weight. His eyes, when Tony could see them, were dead also, face frozen in surprise and pain.

Tony stared at him. He still couldn’t breathe, even though Rivkin’s weight was off his stomach, his hand off Tony’s throat.

 _I just killed a man_.

The thought was louder than the gunshots had been. Tony could still hear the gunshots, the explosions caught in a loop, as he struggled to push himself up one-handed.

When did Ziva get there? Tony blinked, but she was there still, kneeling by Rivkin. Tony blinked again and she was on her feet, knife in hand, staring around wildly.

“Ziva,” he said, voice cracking on the two syllables.

He barely had time to register the fury on her face before she hit him, backhand across the face, her knuckles connecting where a bruise was already forming from where Rivkin had hit him earlier. Ziva was strong, and standing, and he was sitting on the floor and still recovering his breath, and he had no time to protect himself in any way before his head slammed into the floor. Tony groaned, or he thought he did. Then he tried to scream - pressure on his broken arm, pain like fire - but couldn’t because there was pressure on his throat again, blood-warm metal instead of someone’s hand, and somewhere underneath all that his hip was pulsing with pain where Ziva leaned into it.

He could be crying; he didn’t know.

“Ziva,” he tried again, through tightly gritted teeth.

“I should kill you right now,” she spat, pressing the flat of he blade harder against his windpipe, enough to hurt but not yet enough to choke. “Before you kill anyone else.”

For a moment, in the dim flickering of the television, she looked like Kate. The accusation burrowed its way into him, lodging itself in his chest. _I tried to end it once,_ he wanted to tell her. _I did. But you stopped me._ Those words wouldn’t come, though. What spilled out, challenge-like, was: “Then do it.” _Finish this_.

She clenched her left hand again, and he could feel the bone in his forearm shift, ripping into muscle. Her words were dim and distant through the agony. “Coward. You’re pathetic. I should put you out of your misery, should I? Now that you’re done killing everyone I love. Huh?” The pain got worse and so did the pressure against his throat, cutting off the rest of his air. “Answer me!”

He couldn’t answer her. He couldn’t breathe. Seeing was becoming an issue, too, the edges of the room dissolving into black. He might be struggling; he wasn’t sure.

 _You’re pathetic_. Her words echoed in his mind over and over again. _Stop fighting it. You deserve to die._ Ziva’s voice had changed to Pa’s, bitter and angry and betrayed. _All you ever do is bring pain to others. Stop being a coward and end it._

The pressure on his throat eased. He gasped for air, sucking in long breaths on blind instinct, trying not to cough. His eyes were screwed shut, all of his focus on the singular task of keeping the air moving in and out of his lungs. His lungs were burning. Arm, eyes, too. He couldn’t keep track, anymore.

“I’m sorry.” _Never apologize_ , Pa’s voice snapped at him, more real than his own words. “It’s the only thing I’m good at.”

“What? Useless apologies? Or just being useless?” Her words were sharp; Tony opened his eyes again to look up at her. She was so _angry_ , furious like a wild thing trapped, or perhaps finally free to exact its revenge. This was no girl’s face, looking down at him. Tony’s breathe stuttered, something withering and dying inside him with the missed exhale.

He’d failed. Failed to protect her, failed again.

“Getting the people that others love killed,” he told her. Both of them. Ziva’s face kept shifting into Kate’s. _It should have been me._

“And here I thought that you didn’t know,” Ziva said disgustedly. “Are you happy, Tony? Is your revenge complete, now?”

The sudden shift confused Tony. “Revenge?”

A point of sharp pressure against the thin skin of the artery in his neck: the tip of her knife. “Do not lie to me,” she warned. Her voice became darker, sharper, a stranger’s voice but pulling at the edge of Tony’s mind like something he should remember. He resisted the urge to swallow, willing his body to relax.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” _I just wanted to keep you safe. I’m sorry I killed him._

“Do not lie to me!” she yelled. He winced as the knife pressed harder. “And you call yourself my brother? Now you’ll say again you don’t know who my brother was!”

His mind was six steps behind this conversation. “Brother?” His eyes darted to the side; he could just see the unmoving body of the man he’d thought was Ziva’s boyfriend, not... “You mean _Rivkin_?”

“You killed him, you call him by his name,” she spat.

The tip of the knife nicked his skin as he swallowed and forced himself to say it. “Michael was your brother?”

She screamed something at him, a single word, and for a moment it made no sense. Tony only managed to decipher the sound into words, into a name, as she repeated it. “Ari!” she screamed at him, tears streaming down her cheeks.. “Ari was my brother!”

Tony swallowed again. The name ricocheted inside his mind like another bullet. Ari was there, too, smirking at Tony from the shadows behind Kate’s back, hand sliding down her body to her waist. Whose blood was that, cool and sticky on his face? Kate’s? That was Kate’s face above him, sharing space with Ziva’s, and those were Ari’s eyes staring down at him from Ziva’s face.

“I didn’t know.”

She laughed, short and bitter. _Ari was Ziva’s brother. Ari killed Kate. Ziva..._

Her weight was gone; she was standing above him, blood smeared across her cheek.

“Get up,” she said.

He struggled to his feet, left arm clutched against his chest. He couldn’t look at her. He was still suffocating, though neither her hand nor her knife were at his throat. Bile rose, and Tony very nearly forgot to swallow it back down as he tried to make his body - the world of pain that was his body - stand.

“Get out of these clothes,” she said. It took the words a long moment to filter through his brain. “ _Now,_ ” she snapped before he had the chance to finish processing them.

Getting his belt unbuckled was harder than it should have been, but every time he tried to move his left arm, sparks flared in his vision. He bit his lip hard enough to taste blood, trying not to cry out again as he pulled his t-shirt over his head. _Ruined_ , a distant part of his brain noted. _Just like everything else I come in contact with._

Ziva was still talking, but making out the words was an impossible task. She spoke, snapped, and his body responded - he thought it did - but that was distant, as far away as the dark room and the dead man staring at the ceiling.

 _I’m sorry_ , he wanted to tell her. _You weren’t supposed to get hurt. I was supposed to keep you safe. I’m sorry._

 _I’m sorry,_ he kept trying to tell her, but he couldn’t make a sound over the gunfire, still ringing in his head all these years after, over Ari’s echoing laughter and Kate’s accusing eyes, staring him down.

 _I’m sorry_.

 

* * *

 

 _Only two things are infinite,_ Albert Einstein had said: _the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former._ Ziva would agree, and would cite one Tony Gibbs-Mallard as supporting evidence. Case in point, said retard was standing in the foyer of her father’s house, thinking he was smarter than the motion sensors and the silent alarm and having completely forgotten that he’d killed her boyfriend in his own apartment not two weeks before.

Said retard who was apparently deaf and blind also, paying no heed as she came up from behind him and landed a sharp, low crescent kick to the back of his right calf. She was a runner, and a woman: her strength was in her lower body. He yelped when she grabbed his hair, his body’s momentum working against her hold to produce force. She settled in, her knees over his kidneys in case she’d need that and his neck at a comfortable angle for her to keep her knife there for a while.

And because the idiot had scrambled eggs for brains, he said: “Hi honey, I’m home.”

“This is not your home,” she snarled at him, pulling at his hair for emphasis and also by way of a silent message: _I can break your neck in a heartbeat._

He tensed under her, breath momentarily stopped, and then it was just the quivering of pain and his usual passivity. A second later, he asked: “Can we have this conversation without you giving me more bruises?”

“How about some cuts?” she demanded, shifting her right hand to draw blood. “Nothing you don’t deserve,” she added, like a backhand, by way of a reminder.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said, as if agreeing, “but if you’re not going to just kill me and get this over with, maybe you can let me sit up?”

She should’ve slit his throat. Should’ve, except that would be a bitch to clean up. Instead she changed the angle of the blade to avoid that very scenario and smacked the back of his neck with her other hand, palm open.

It took thirty pounds of stress to break a human neck. Ziva could produce that much force easily.

Tony went boneless, flaccid. She waited until some life returned to his muscles before reminding him: “You do not make the rules here.”

It was a moment still before he managed to answer her. She should have known he wouldn’t shut up. “Clearly,” he grit out.

He turned his head to the side and she tracked, placing the tip of her knife at the soft tissue under his chin. Her other hand remained on his neck, a silent reminder. The bruises she’d given him ten days prior were still there. “Is there any reason you’re here, other than to be completely insufferable, as usual?”

“Just... listen, please?”

Her fingers clenched, digging into the artery. She was so goddamned tired, tired of fucking Tony and his begging, like he had any goddamned right, fucking tired of being angry. This was easy. She watched the pits her fingers pressed into the soft flesh of his throat, counted seconds, counting down to the animal-thrashing of the last moments.

She let go before then. She could end it easily enough, four different ways without repositioning her hands; the hell.

“Talk,” she said shortly.

Of all the stupid, pointless, wrath-inducing things he could have said, she still didn’t expect the “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t know about your brother,” he continued. There was an odd quality to his voice that she couldn’t name; still high on asphyxia, possibly. “And I don’t know what I would have done, if I had, but I’m sorry that you lost someone you cared about, that -”

Her hand twitched, reflexively, a loss of control paralleled by the catch in her breath. Tony had stopped talking, but she only half-noticed that.

 _I’m sorry you lost someone you cared about._ Ari had killed his _sister._ Dust bunnies for brains.

“I killed him,” she told him, biting out the words. She’d only spoken the words out loud once, before, and that to the man whose fault it all was. “I shot him dead. Put a bullet right through his brain.” She closed her eyes for a second. Just her and Tony, that was all. “That big, smart brain of his. He’d thought to use me, so I killed him.”

And because he was Tony, he said “I’m sorry,” again, and even sounded like he’d meant it.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told him.

“It _does_ matter. He was your brother. You shouldn’t have had to make that choice.”

She let her chin drop, her eyes closing again. “You keep saying that word like it means something. _Brother._ ”

“It means he should have cared about you,” Tony said. She could feel his pulse thrumming under her fingers and in his abdomen, his breath coming in waves. “Protected you. Done everything in his power to keep you safe.”

“I’ve always looked after myself,” she told him. Her attention was elsewhere, though. Something was wrong. A noise slightly too wrong to be a cat, and then another, and she couldn’t see the security monitors from the foyer’s floor. Her eyes scanned the windows, searching. “Why does that even matter, Tony?”

 _There._ She only barely responded in time, pivoting on one leg as she pushed herself up, dragging Tony up with her by his shirt collar and keeping both of them from stumbling down - Tony helpless like a ragdoll - by some miracle. She used her knife-hand to open the door and threw Tony outside, down into the grass, jumping in after him. She slung the knife on her neck with one hand and pulled out the gun with the other before switching the gun to her strong hand and taking aim, bracing against the porch and scanning for movement.

She could hear them moving in the house. She could also hear Tony breathing hard where he lay in the grass. He hadn’t broken his neck in the fall, apparently.

She knew this could come. The police had no reason to look too closely into the death of one more ‘banger from the ‘hood, even if someone was particularly smart about covering their tracks, but Michael’s pals did not need evidence. Ziva had been with Michael, and he was dead and she was gone. She’d known this could come.

She hadn’t counted on Tony laying at her feet. _Tony_ had killed Michael. She could grab him by the collar and shove him in front of her, give him away and get her place back. If she played it right they would be hers, the way they had been first Ari’s and then Michael’s. No one to stop her, not her hapless father, not Agent Gibbs and certainly not Tony, who would get down on his knees and confess and beg to be killed.

No one to stop her, but herself. She could give the gang Tony, and play for her place. Tony had put himself in her hands, though, this night and before. She _could_ kill him, and he wouldn’t protest.

She found that she didn’t want to.

 _There._ She tipped the gun up on instinct, the shot hitting - was that Marky? - in the shoulder or very much near it and ducked before the inevitable, clumsy volley that followed.

“You can’t hide forever, bitch,” called Jack’s voice from inside.

She resumed her position and waited.

Sure enough, eventually the front door creaked open and there was one figure and another, and Ziva placed a clean shot to the middle of each of their chests before they even knew what hit them. She waited a second, just to make sure, but they didn’t get up.

She had a mess that needed cleaning. Again. And now _Tony_ was her responsibility to get through this, and not just a collateral of covering her own ass.

Well, that could be helpful.

She glanced down at him. “Your phone,” she demanded. Gibbs may not answer the David ground line, but he’d answer his son.

He stared at her with wide eyes. “Left it at home,” he said.

Of all the - “Rule number three,” she snapped at him, reaching down to pull him up and then pushing him up the porch stairs. “Inside.”

Jack and Stan were bleeding on the porch. Marky had already bled to death on the carpet, her bullet having nicked the big artery. She walked past them all, pulling Tony with her to the kitchen. She picked up the phone and dialed from memory.

He picked up on the fifth ring. “Yeah, Gibbs.”

“We are at my father’s house and we need you,” she said shortly.

“Ziva? What on earth - what do you mean, ‘we’?”

“Tony and I,” she clarified, and continued immediately. “There are three dying ‘bangers on the floors. The neighbours will have called the police.” They could have seven minutes still, or they could have one. There was no way to know.

There was a split-second pause and then he said “I’ll be right there,” and hung up.

She killed the line and put the phone back down.

“Does this mean you’re done throwing me around for the night?” Tony asked; he sounded high and he looked about as beaten to shit as she expected him to look. “Or should I just get back on the floor to make your job easier?”

 _I just saved your miserable life,_ she thought. She very nearly hit him. Last thing she needed was to crack his skull open now, though.

“Sit down,” she said. He was nodding on his feet. “Shut up, and try to not keel over.”

He collapsed back onto the barstool like a puppet with its strings cut off, one hand rising in a mockery of a salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

 

* * *

Abby’s family was Not Okay. Even with Ziva home again, nothing was right; Dad and Pa were still fighting, Tim still spent half the time in a medicine-induced haze, Tony still wouldn’t let anyone get close to him, and Ziva was even more distant than usual.

It wasn’t fair.

Pa and Tony had brought Ziva home. That should have fixed things, but it didn’t, and Abby couldn’t figure out why. She wanted to help, but no one would even tell her what had happened, and her usual methods weren’t working. She hated being helpless almost as much as she hated not knowing the truth.

She had her suspicions, of course. It wasn’t hard to put the pieces of evidence together, even if Dad changed the subject every time Abby asked and Pa refused to talk about it at all. Something had happened between Tony and Ziva to make her not come home. But that shouldn’t have mattered any more, because she was sitting in the kitchen doing her homework now.

But Abby wasn’t stupid. She could see the way Ziva and Tony were acting around each other, the way Tony would look to Ziva for permission, as if he needed her approval to even breathe.

Hah.

Tony didn’t need anyone’s permission, least of all Ziva’s. And if he thought he did for whatever reason, Ziva shouldn’t have been taking advantage of him like that. The thought made Abby’s blood boil, and she probably would have marched out into the kitchen right that moment, except Timmy had fallen asleep using her shoulder as a pillow.

She’d wait until tomorrow, when Dad and Pa were at work. Her parents had a bit of a blind spot where Ziva was concerned lately, so this time it would be up to Abby to handle things. But that was all right. At least now she could be doing _something_ to help her family.

 

* * *

 

Ziva had heard it when Tony left his room. It should be remarkable, even for her, that she never failed to hear the creak of furniture that heralded Tony’s approach, even over Abby’s music blasting from the one side of the hallway and the muffled echoes of one of Tim’s games from the other side of her room. It was still remarkable, if she let herself think about that. Mostly she didn’t, accepting that for a fact, no different than the knowledge that Tony would stop by her door regardless of where he was going.

It was like that, absolute like Tony offering his death to her, and like her choosing his life instead.

Three and a half seconds before Tony appeared in her doorframe. By then, she’d already set _The Cardinal of the Kremlin_ to the side, her finger stuck in by way of a temporary bookmark. Anticipating him, always, and making sure he knew that.

He paused inside the doorway rather than outside of it, that tension playing around his mouth that would become a smile if she let it, if she gave him time enough. She nodded before that happened, measured and reserved. There were only so many questions he might speak, asking in that way, and the only answer she ever gave to any of them was _Yes._

Two seconds for him to walk across her room, and only in the last half-second she could tell for certain that he was getting under her bed again.

It had been her idea, back in August, her way of making a ridiculous situation even more so and putting Tony _away_ from things he did not know to remove himself from. Time-outs, like with a little child. It had been amusing, then; not so much since the first time she had said _Yes_ and he had done that.

She had been too distracted to read, that first time, even though it was just _The Cardinal of the Kremlin_ , just a book she’d read when she was nine and only picked up again because she seemed to be too tired for anything else, lately. She knew why she had told Tony to get in there, back then. She was less sure why he was asking for it now. Back then, it was also a way to make it possible for herself to think of anything but the incessant drama. Now, each of those times was a ten-minute struggle to wrench her attention away from the knowledge of Tony putting himself under her, in her hands again.

She’d already eased back into her reading pace when the music from Abby’s room changed. There was a certain reason to Abby’s playlists, and this track did not fit after the one that came before it. Ziva closed the book where it lay on her knees, fingers between the pages, and listened. There, Abby’s footsteps: it sounded like Abby On A Mission.

Seconds later, Abby was at Ziva’s doorstep, looking indeed like an Abby On A Mission, complete with war paint, bracelets that were meant to be scary and her hands on her hips. She rapped her knuckles against the doorframe even though Ziva was looking straight at her.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“If you say so,” Ziva agreed. Abby was queen of this house and everyone in it, to judge by the way she acted sometimes. “What do we need to talk about?”

“Tony,” Abby said, hurling the word like a challenge.

Ziva hadn’t had expectations of what Abby would demand they talk of or, rather, what Abby wanted to talk at Ziva about. Still, though, she hadn’t quite expected that. What did Abby know? What did Abby suspect?

“Don’t stand in the doorway,” she replied eventually.

Abby stepped into the room. Ziva watched her gait carefully. No, Abby was not looking for anything, was not paying any particular attention to anything in the room. She did, however, stand near the foot of the bed rather come around and face Ziva directly. It could be plain laziness - the foot _was_ closer to the door - but Abby did, in fact, know how to handle conflict. The hesitation reinforced the possibility that this was yet another inexplicable Abby-tantrum, but Ziva just couldn’t come up with a reason for such that would revolve around _Tony._

“Whatever’s going on between you and Tony needs to stop,” Abby said sharply.

Ziva blinked.

“He’s not your puppet to jerk around on its strings, you know,” Abby continued. “He’s a _person._ ”

Ziva would have laughed in her face, if she wasn’t that angry. “I would tell you to go get a clue,” she hurled at her; Tony was there, hearing every word if he wanted to, even if this stupid bitch didn’t know it, “but if you were capable of that, you would not be standing here saying these childish things.”

“I’m not the one without a clue here,” Abby snapped back.

There was only one way to reply to _that_ that would dignify anyone who was fool enough to do so. Drawing herself up and putting the book aside, Ziva demanded: “Explain.”

She did not expect Abby to draw herself up as well and take a step forward. “You are _not_ allowed to use that tone of voice on me,” Abby said, pathetically imperious. “And you _will_ let Tony see Pa.”

Ziva’s legs untangled almost on their own, toes grasping for hold on the bed. That wouldn’t do, of course - even hard mattresses were too soft, too yielding. That thought was just the soft voice of habit in the back of her head, though. The stupid bitch was making less sense by the second, and what she’d just said was downright ludicrous.

“They see each other all the time,” Ziva said, letting her disgust show. “And I have certainly not _forbidden_ Tony anything.” That was what Ziva’s disgust was for, not Abby’s gnat-like idiocy. “What he does or does not do is his choice, and,” she continued, narrowing her eyes and making the words the threat they were, “you have no place second-guessing him.”

“You barely even let him go to the bathroom by himself,” Abby demanded, something that wasn’t anger leaking through it, something that sounded like _petulance,_ “and you’re accusing _me_ of second-guessing him? Who do you think you are?”

The intensity of anger wasn’t new - Ziva had been angrier before - but the tenor of it was. This anger was different, more demanding somehow, more like _fury,_ in the sense like the ancient Greek goddesses. The words spilled out, no second thought between them and Ziva’s voice, ringing out: “I think I am not a stupid, spoiled brat who thinks she’s so much holier than anyone else!”

Abby opened her mouth, but she never got to say anything.

“Knock it off, both of you!” Came Tony’s voice, muffled by the bed but still loud and sharp, and immediately after it Tony, struggling up with his one good hand. Ziva _knew_ standing up was more difficult to him than that.

They’d startled Tony. That never ended well.

“Tony!” Abby demanded, having recoiled half a step in her surprise. “What were you doing under Ziva’s bed?”

His eyes slid to Ziva, glancing from her face down the bed and back again. There was no way that this would end well, but behind the scenarios and sub-scenarios and contingency plans fleshing themselves out in Ziva’s head was also a patient, twisted sense of curiosity, wondering how would Tony explain himself.

She might as well have known. “Feeding the dust bunnies,” he said flippantly.

Abby’s eyes widened, and then her gaze slid right past Tony and she narrowed them at Ziva. “You stay away from Tony,” she snarled.

Ziva was more than halfway to lunging at her before Tony shook Abby’s hand off his elbow and stepped away from her and closer to Ziva, giving her an odd glance as if that hand had been _hers_.

“Stop it,” he snapped, and she wasn’t sure which of them he was talking to. “Ziva isn’t making me do anything or stopping me from doing anything.” Abby, apparently. “I appreciate your concern, Abs, I really do,” he continued, softer, before closing the distance between them and hugging her.

Ziva didn’t blink, because blinking was a sign of weakness, and even if there was no one to see her in that moment it was still a bad habit. But this did not make _sense,_ even more so than Tony pushing himself up that way with an anger that wasn’t his.

“Promise she’s not making you do anything you don’t want?” Abby asked, voice muffled by her brother’s shirt and shoulder, and once again Ziva’s fingers itched. It wasn’t like that. Why didn’t Tony tell her that? What was he playing at?

“I promise, Abs,” Tony said. He was still holding her. “Now how about you go make some popcorn and I’ll be down in a minute to watch Stargate with you?”

Ziva could see Abby’s grin - bright, misleading, manipulative - as she pulled back from Tony. “You’ve got five minutes,” she said, and ran out of the room.

Ziva’s teeth were still bared in a silent snarl, body still poised for a leap that wouldn’t happen.

They both counted seconds until Abby was gone downstairs. His move, still. Ziva waited.

She hadn’t expected him to say, “Don’t do that again,” in that tone of voice that did not sound like him, and she did not expect him to remain with his back to her. That scared her. It wasn’t just his voice, that was wrong: it was his posture, too, and the way he chose his words. So much did not make sense that a nonsensical thought slipped through and wouldn’t slip back out, that if he’d turn around, that would not be his face she’d see but a stranger’s.

She swallowed. “Please turn around?” she asked, careful, not knowing what to expect.

When he turned around his face was Tony’s, though, and a face she knew. He looked like that when he was trying to behave as he thought an older brother ought to. She could almost see him calculate the odds and demands as he sat down on the edge of the bed, two and a half feet from her, and offered her his hand. __

 _No,_ she thought. _Not like that._ Not with him acting on motives she did not understand and acting as if she was smaller and weaker. Not like _that._ She’d throw it in his face, but that would be a mistake like Abby’s. Ziva needed to understand. Still it was impossible to not feel her body collapse on her, to not have it display her own resistance as she asked: “What shouldn’t I do again?”

She might as well have thrown a switch, or perhaps Tony had. That thing that wasn’t him drained out, dissipated, and Ziva wanted to slap bruises onto Abby’s face because Tony was supposed to be _better_ when he left Ziva’s room, not even more worn out.

“Abby’s my sister, too,” he said, as if he was offering an apology.

Tony was always fucking apologizing.

She wanted, for a fleeting moment, to hug him; to offer the comfort it seemed to give. It was not her place, though, and it seemed too awkward. The movement forward, to fall on her knees, her hand continuing the arc and finding his shoulder, grasping around bone and flesh, that was natural.

He closed his hand over hers, larger hand covering smaller like an echo of something familiar, and Ziva closed her eyes against tears that made no sense, wondering - somewhere, distantly, behind _I will not cry_ but closer than noting the levels of Tim’s game across the wall - if she would leave bruises on his shoulder, too, yet another keepsake on his body.

He was on his way to Abby, though. He wouldn’t do anything stupid in front of Abby, but Abby would not know to watch for it when he’d step aside. “I’ll still be here,” she whispered, eyes still closed. “Promise you’ll come back.”

And he replied, in one of his funny voices: “I’ll be back.”

 

* * *

 

Tony had waited until the house had quieted for the night before creeping out of his bedroom and down the stairs. He hadn’t heard Pa come up from the basement yet, though that had been getting later and later in the last few weeks. His parents hadn’t had this many problems since Pa had nearly died, and it made Tony’s stomach twist painfully thinking about it, knowing they were fighting because of him.

Everyone was fighting because of him, lately. Pa and Aunt Jenny had hardly spoken in the last year, Dad had been making Pa sleep on the couch too many times, Tim had taken refuge at Uncle Tobias’ house, and Tony was still surprised that Abby and Ziva hadn’t come to physical blows yet. __

 _Which is why you have to do this_. _You promised both of them you’d talk to Pa_.

But Tony couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so... well, scared. Pa and he had barely been in the same room as each other since things with Jeanne had gone to hell, and even though Pa had come when Ziva had called, he still wasn’t exactly talking to Tony.

He stood outside the basement door, staring at it for several long seconds. Pa had hugged him that night, at Ziva’s father’s house. But three weeks later, nothing felt any different to Tony. Pa was still in the basement, avoiding him. Tony reached for the door handle slowly, carefully, like it might burn him. If it was locked, at least he could tell Abby and Ziva that he’d tried. But the knob turned easily under his hand, and he stepped into the basement.

Pa was hammering. That was usually a bad sign. He hammered when he was angry. Tony sat on the top step, feeling suddenly young. He tried to remember the last time he had watched Pa work on the boat. A lump formed in his throat when he realized this wasn’t even the same one he’d last seen, that he hadn’t come down here since before Kate had been killed.

 _Almost three years._

He searched the cement floor for any sign of what had happened there, to see if there was any of Ari’s blood left in this house, other than in Ziva’s veins. But Pa must have scrubbed the floor with bleach. If Tony hadn’t known what had happened - known the whole truth, now - he would never have suspected.

Pa kept hammering, not looking up at Tony. He swallowed, and moved down several more steps. He ached for Pa to acknowledge him, even if it was to tell him to leave, instead of pretending like Tony didn’t even exist.

He had worked his way slowly almost to the bottom of the staircase when Pa paused to wipe some sweat away. “Have you forgotten how to _walk_ , Tony?” he asked. There was something cold and distant about his voice, something that sent a sudden chill down Tony’s spine.

He had to swallow several times before he could find his voice. “No, sir.” He winced, even as he said the words. Pa _hated_ being called sir, a mistake Tony hadn’t made since he was ten. Pa had his hammer up, and for a long moment, Tony wondered if he was going to throw it at him, but then Pa put the hammer down and looked at Tony.

“Then get down here,” Pa ordered. He turned away and started pulling a saw horse out. Tony came down the last three steps and stopped, but Pa only gave him a look instead of further orders.

He opened his mouth to say _I’m sorry_ , but snapped it shut again. Pa would only lecture him on apologies, and that wasn’t why Tony had come down there. There were a thousand other things he wanted to say, too: _I’m sorry_ again, and _Can’t you just give me another hug?_ and _I wish things had gone differently too_. But the only thing that came out was a single word, for all that it seemed to carry the full volume of all that pain and all that longing. “Pa.”

Pa flinched, gaze sharp and assessing all of a sudden. He got up and pulled Tony the only chair in the basement, pushing Tony down into it before pulling his own makeshift seat closer. Anger and disappointment were writ large across his face.

“What is it, Tony?” Pa asked. He sounded tired, almost, but that couldn’t be right. Pa never sounded like that. Words stuck in Tony’s throat again before he could make his voice work.

“Ziva told me what happened. With her br--” No, he couldn’t call Ari that. Ari had killed Kate. “With Ari,” he finished.

Pa took a deep breath. “She did.” It wasn’t quite a question; Pa was good with that technique, Tony knew, one of his tricks at getting people to tell him more than they’d intended.

Didn’t matter. Tony was planning on telling Pa everything, anyway.

“That she killed him,” he said. _Right here, in our basement_ , he thought. The thought crawled under his skin like so many spiders, like the aftershock of a blow. _Maybe even where I’m sitting right now. Isn’t that appropriate?_

“She did,” Pa said again. This time it was an agreement, and Tony could see that subtle shift from Pa to Agent Gibbs: face a little more blank, body seeming a little more relaxed. “When did she tell you?”

“The night I broke my arm. At least, that’s when she told me he was her... you know.” _Ari was her big brother._ The thought wasn’t getting any less nauseating with repetition. _She killed him because he left her no other choice_. “She told me the rest at her father’s house.”

Tony let the words hang and waited for Pa’s reaction. He could see Pa fit the details together, putting scenarios together and then picking them apart before asking his next question. “What happened that she told you?”  
 __

 _I killed a man_. The words didn’t even need swallowing back. They would have to wait, because Pa would want to know the details, and Tony wasn’t sure he could do this more than once. Was pretty sure he couldn’t. He pushed the emotion down as far as he could.

“I followed her after school that day. She didn’t have practice. She was meeting up with a guy.” He paused, swallowing. “Michael Rivkin.”

Pa would have to know what that meant. He’d have known the connection between Rivkin and Ari from the start.

“Then what happened?” Pa demanded.

For one long moment, Tony considered lying again. If this got out, Pa could lose his job, not to mention Tony would end up in jail. Lying would protect his family, but he was too tired to lie any more.

“I went to his apartment that night,” he admitted. “Just to talk, but... he had a gun, and we struggled.” _Two shots, one right through the heart; lucky. Not even that much blood_. Tony looked Pa straight in the eye, and the words came surprisingly easily: “I killed him.”

“You struggled. It was self defence,” Pa said, still in his not-quite-a-question tone, though it sounded off to Tony somehow. Forced. He didn’t sound surprised by Tony’s declaration, though.

“I pushed my way into his apartment uninvited.”

Pa shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.” He stood up and put his hands on Tony’s shoulders, trapping him in place. “Self defence,” he repeated.

Tony searched Pa’s face. This wasn’t how he’d imagined things to go, Pa trying to defend Tony from his own stupidity. He wanted this to be real, wanted to believe Pa. Needed to. His shoulders slumped: the story wasn’t over, and he couldn’t so much as look at Pa for this one. “She got there just after,” he told the floor.

“What happened?” That was Pa’s interrogation voice again, coming from above him.

“She...” _Threw me on the ground and held a knife to my throat._ “We talked,” he amended.

“Talked?” Pa snapped. “That wasn’t Rivkin’s palm-print on your cheek, Tony.”

Tony flinched even as his head turned up, meeting Pa’s full-blown glare. “If you already know what happened, then why are you bothering to ask?” But if Pa already knew, that certainly explained why he had been ignoring Tony still, even after Ziva had come home again.

“Why are you lying again?” Pa demanded.

“What do you want me to say?” Tony demanded in return, too overwhelmed with _something_ to consider what he was saying. “That she pinned me to the floor and put a knife to my throat?” He wanted to laugh, because that was such a _minor_ detail of that night, but Pa didn’t seem like he was going to laugh. He looked like he might hit someone, and when his hands shifted, Tony steeled himself. The blow never came. Instead, Pa sat down again on the saw horse he’d just dragged closer.

“She was seeing Rivkin,” Pa repeated, summarizing. “She put a knife to your throat. What happened next?” he asked.

Tony’s body was still frozen, waiting for the blow. He had to swallow dry several times, reminding himself each time that Pa had never hit him, before he could make himself talk. “She told me about Ari.” The memory was sharp enough in that moment that Tony could still hear Ziva’s voice, still see her face, feel her weight on him. “And then... uh...” He drew a blank. Something must have happened, but all he could remember was Ziva’s hand closing on his arm, everything white with pain, and her screaming down at him that Ari had been her brother.

“Someone cleaned up the scene,” Pa prompted, his voice drawing Tony back to the present. “The clothes in which you arrived at the hospital were not your own, and did not have blood on them.”

The image flashed in front of his eyes, sudden but still a little fuzzy, muted: _Ziva, going into the other room, coming back with a bundle of clothes, shoving them into his hands._ “They were Ri--” _You killed him, you call him by his name_ , clear as if she was standing next to him, and once again Tony had to try. “Mi--” That word stuck in his throat. “His.”

“Figured as much.” Pa sighed. “That was that night. What happened three weeks ago?”

Tony wasn’t sure he had the energy to continue. He already felt wrung dry. Pa wouldn’t stop until he was satisfied, though. Tony knew that. It would be pointless to do anything but continue, so he did. Or someone did, because Tony did not have enough in him to speak on his own. “I went to talk to her,” his voice said. “To see if she would come home. We were interrupted.”

There he stopped, words bled away again. It had to have been enough, for once, because Pa’s next question came from left field. “Why did you come down here tonight, Tony?”  
 __

 _Because I missed you. Because I wanted you to tell me everything would be okay. Because..._ “Because Ziva finally made me.” It was no less true then the others, but it somehow hurt a little less.

“The hell, Tony?” Pa asked sharply. “Why did she have to _make_ you?”

That one didn’t even hurt to say, somehow. Perhaps because he’d already made up his mind to give Pa what he wanted. “Because I didn’t know if you would ignore me or not,” he admitted softly. _And I’m not sure what I would have done, if you had_.

Pa did something completely unexpected in that moment. He pulled Tony close, into a hug. Tony felt the dam inside of him break, and no matter how much he didn’t want to cry in front of his Pa, he couldn’t stop the tears.

 

* * *

 

The house was full of noise, again. Tim and Abby were back for the summer, and that was outright moving-in rather than the weekend visit during the year. Ziva could hear them and Ducky from downstairs, arguing loudly over crates and carrying and whether Abby’s clothes had tripled or quadrupled, both which notions Abby seemed to resent.

Ziva, who still had her own finals to study for, was in her room. To close her door would have dampened the noise somewhat, but Ziva left it open. She preferred it that way. There were advantages to the open door, too. She heard the approaching footsteps and recognized the gait. She did not lift her eyes from her homework, though. This was a new thing she was trying.

There was a soft, familiar knock on her door frame, and Tony’s voice, soft and strained. “Hey.”

Finally, Ziva looked up. He had been looking better, before, but the next day would not be a pleasant one for anyone, and the strain was beginning to show. Abby and Tim, who had not been there for the past four days, would not know. Even they had to notice that shirt, though. Grey and old enough to fray around the edges, the black letters splayed across it spelled NIS. That Tony was wearing a shirt so obviously his Pa’s should have been a screaming signal.

He had been standing at her door for three seconds. She had not said a word, and he did not dare come in. “Do you require a written invitation?” she asked. He took that as permission to enter, stepping across the threshold into her room. At his second step she rose to her feet and walked over to the bed.

Tony hadn’t looked this worn out since before he went down to the basement. He didn’t try to get under the bed, though. Rather, he paused next to it, seeming conflicted.

This was new.

Ziva sat on the bed, one hand’s fingers splayed on the coverlet next to her by way of an invitation. Tony sat down next to her, silently.  
Ziva eyed the open door, and put a hand on Tony’s shoulder as she pushed herself up: _stay._ She closed the door, walked back, pulled the knife from underneath her pillow and sat down again next to Tony, unsheathing the blade.

The look he was giving the knife was different than usual; warier, maybe. Ziva’s heartbeat picked up.

“New knife?” Tony asked. His voice was different, too. Odd, in a way. That was new as well.

Ziva was tempted to swallow or to clench her hands. When she spoke, her voice wasn’t entirely stable. “Michael ga... that knife was given to me by Michael.” The blade, only half-drawn, was still waiting in her lap.

“Oh.” There was a weight in that single syllable, filled to the brim with _something._ Uncertainty; hesitation; and something she couldn’t quite name, another thing that was new. No fear, though. Still no fear, even though she did not hesitate in drawing the blade completely and placing the flat of it against his throat. No force in the gesture, but no hesitation either. It would only take a flick to drive the blade in.

They’d done this dozens of times, since the night she had called Agent Gibbs to come and get them. Tony would come to her room - to watch her, to stand there, to hide under the bed - and eventually, she would draw the knife, put it at his throat and watch him. He never flinched, never reacted in any way. He only ever met her eyes, quiet, waiting.

Not this time, though. His shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes. This could still be either relief or disappointment. His eyes were screwed shut, though, and something like pain flashed across his face as he swallowed, the subtle motion telegraphed through the bobbing of her knife on his throat.

It said, quite clearly, _I do not want this._

Ziva drew the knife from his throat, too quickly, sliding it back into its sheath with hands that were not quite as stable as they had been seconds before. Her heart was beating even quicker than it did before as she leaned across to stuff the knife back under her pillow. She barely dared take her eyes off him for the half a second it took: he was still hunched in over himself, looking as if he would rather be anywhere but there -

But he was still there, half a second after, and Ziva flung her arms about him and held on with everything she had before she could lose the courage to do so.


	3. Restart

Something was up. Tim knew that, just like he knew it was Saturday. Something was very, most definitely _up._ He’d started noticing it the day before. Dad looked better somehow, more relaxed, when he opened the door to Abby and Tim. Tony had only showed up long enough to mutter a hello before slinking upstairs again, but Tim got stuck at the bottom of the stairs for a good several seconds staring up after him, because the smile that had lurked at the corner of Tony’s mouth was the real deal. When Tim tried to recall how long ago he had last seen Tony smile - since before his fight with Ziva, whatever that had been about - he also realized that Tony had come downstairs unprompted.

Tony was wearing one of Pa’s old shirts, too. Tim had only caught up to that later that day. Pa was different, also. Relieved as Tim was to hear no more yelling, and to have the slow-toothache of the tension between Pa and Tony gone, he wasn’t sure what to make of the odd un-Pa-like gentleness with which he treated Tony. That gentleness stood in stark contrast to the tension that had cropped up between Pa and Ziva.

That made Tim’s skin crawl, too. Pa had been fawning over Ziva for as long as he’d been ignoring Tony. Ten days before, it was Tony at arm’s length from Pa, not Ziva. The sudden change felt downright unnatural, and Tim felt tempted to ask if he’d stumbled into the Twilight Zone; Abby, at least, would not make fun of him for the reference.

Something had happened. Something that had caused the currents in the house to change, the power balance to shift widely. Tim didn’t like that. He didn’t like not knowing, and no one had been in the habit of telling anyone anything in too long a time.

He couldn’t entirely discount the conclusion Abby had come to: that Ziva had been controlling Tony somehow, keeping him away from Pa. If that was true, and if Pa had finally put an end to the situation, that could explain what Tim was seeing. Still, though. Ziva was cold and distant, but Tim did not want to believe that about her. Couldn’t, quite, though not nearly as much as he couldn’t bring himself to believe that Tony would let himself be controlled like that. That wasn’t like Tony, even with everything that was inexplicable about the last two years.

Knowing his family, Tim had no expectation that any answers would be forthcoming. The best case scenario was that he’d be able to coax Ziva in for Fear Tower III later that night, after Abby went out to one of her clubs, and maybe get a better read on her then. Maybe, because Ziva had become even more closed off in the month that passed since she returned.

By the end of lunch, though, Tim realized that maybe more than the power balance has changed. Dad had been quite invested in the sit-down family meal, but Tim had discarded that as Dad, relieved at the diminished conflict. Dad’s preoccupation only increased during the meal instead of decrease, and Pa had to be in on whatever Dad had planned, because Pa, too, seemed distracted. And not just them, Tim thought, using the clearing of the dishes as an excuse to survey his family. Tony wasn’t looking anywhere but the tablecloth, and Ziva’s back was ramrod-straight.

Tim’s eyes locked with Abby. They were the only ones who did not know what was going on. As usual.

With the dining table clear, Pa ordered: “Living room. Everyone. Now.”

At least that much seemed normal, Tim thought wryly.

“Really, Dear,” Dad said. The protest was mild, but his gaze was suddenly sharp. “I would quite like a pot of tea. Would anyone else want some, too?”

Pa rolled his eyes; Tony and Ziva shook their heads, Ziva’s motion nearly imperceptible; and Abby said, “I’ll help you make it, Dad.”

Dad gestured at the kitchen. “After you, Abigail.”

The rest of them shuffled into the living room, Pa at their back like a dark and brooding sheep dog.

Tim went straight for the couch that was, unofficially, his and Abby’s. By the time he looked around Pa had already occupied the oversized chair, which was pretty much what Tim had expected, but Tony and Ziva were still standing in the middle of the room, Tony closer to the big couch and Ziva to the other small one, as if they couldn’t decide where to sit. It could have been amusing if it wasn’t so disturbing.

They were still just standing there when Abby and Dad finally came. Abby brought both their mugs and sat down next to him, passing him his without a word. Dad sat down at one end of the big couch and looked up, giving Tony and Ziva a meaningful glance.

Wordlessly, they joined him. Tony, Tim noticed, was holding Ziva’s hand, and Ziva was looking down. Tim glanced automatically at Abby: she saw it too.

“There is something you should know,” Ziva said. Her voice was low, but clear. “It’s...” She looked up. “You are going to be angry,” she said, looking directly at Abby and Tim.

Tim looked between her and Pa, considered, and asked: “Should I go grab a pill and a glass of water now?”

“You may want to have one at the ready,” Dad said after a split-second’s pause.

Feeling awkward as hell, Tim got up and went to fetch the aforementioned items. The tableau in the living room had not shifted at all in the time it took him to return.

“So,” he said, feeling more awkward by the second. “What is this all about?”

“Three years ago,” Pa began, and then stopped.

Tim’s pulse skyrocketed. _Three years._ He grabbed the pill and swallowed it, downing the entire glass.

 _Three years_ meant Kate.

Abby put her hand on Tim’s knee. Tim grabbed it with his.

“I had been looking into Haswari’s background,” Pa continued. “I back traced some payments that had been made to his mother’s account. They came from Colonel Eli David.”

Pause.

Through the haze of the developing panic, the nonsensical belief that the living room was about to burst in flames, that a truck was going to come in though the windows and kill them all - kill them all except Tim, again - Tim thought that something wasn’t quite right.

Why had Ziva spoken first? Why did Pa take over?

What did Colonel David have to do with Ari’s mother?

“He made those payments,” and that was Ziva, looking straight ahead again and her voice very clear and maybe slightly too loud, “because -” She paused, and Pa very nearly took over again before Ziva said, still in that too-audible voice: “It was the only acknowledgment he ever made that Ari was his son. I am Ari’s sister.”

No one said anything. No one moved. Not Pa, who had his face in his hands, or Dad, who was searching everyone’s reactions. Certainly not Tony, who was still clutching Ziva’s hand.

Ari’s _sister._

Then Abby exploded.

“You’re his _what_?” Abby demanded, bursting to her feet and nearly tearing off Tim’s fingers in the process. Her gaze shifted away from Ziva before the girl could answer as Abby rounded up on Pa. “You knew? You knew all along and you still let that _thing_ into our house? Into Kate’s room?”

“ _She_ has a name,” Pa said flatly. “What Ziva’s father or brother did is not her fault.”

“You _knew_ ,” Abby said again, and Tim could hear the disgust and betrayal in her tone.

“I knew,” he said, his voice too cold and too flat to be called agreement. “Now you know, too.”

“Why now?” Tim asked. He could barely hear his own voice, but Abby snapped her mouth shut, for all that she was still glaring death and daggers at Pa.

“Because last summer...” Ziva said. Then she paused. Her throat worked as she searched for words, but the rest of her was as still as Tim had ever seen her. “It seemed to me that no-one remembered his death but me. So I found somebody else who would.” Another pause. “One of his friends. Not from the Corps.”

“Michael Rivkin.” That was Tony, though Tim had never heard him sound like that before. He hadn’t sounded this haunted even immediately after Kate. His shoulders were hunched in a way that had to be painful, back folded in as if he was trying to curl in on himself. He was pale, and his expression was pinched.

He and Ziva were _still_ holding on to each other for dear life.

“Michael is dead,” Ziva said. Her voice was low and clear again. “That was the night I returned to the Colonel’s house.”

“Maybe you should have stayed there,” Abby said, arms crossed over her chest.

“I would’ve,” Ziva said, too calmly, looking Abby in the eye, “if the gang had not tried to kill Tony and I. If Tony hadn’t come,” she added, more quietly.

“Tell me you didn’t know already, too,” Abby addressed Tony. Tim recognized that as her not-quite-begging tone of voice, when she was serious instead of just trying to get her own way.

“He -” Ziva began.

“I knew,” Tony interrupted. His voice was so soft Tim thought he had imagined it, but then he repeated himself, louder. “I knew they were related.”

Ziva turned her head to the side, to Tony. Tim had never seen anyone focus so completely on one other person. And her expression -

He’d seen Ziva focused on a single task. He’d seen Ziva angry. He’d seen Ziva, most often, apathetic or wearing a mask of faint disdain. This was something new.

She was Ari’s sister - he could see it now, that he knew to look for it, in the shape of her eyes, in the way she tilted her head - but she looked at Tony like he was her brother.

“Abby,” Dad said. His voice was quiet, but not without authority. “If you would listen to me, please.”

“What, are you going to tell me you’ve been lying about something, too?” she demanded. Tim could tell she was on the verge of tears.

“I was only told about all this four days ago.”

“That doesn’t make it any better.”

“I was trying to say,” he continued, voice a little softer, “that you are not the only one upset, neither over what has now come to light, nor over having been kept in the dark.” Dad’s eyes skipped to Pa, unexpectedly piercing.

“She was thirteen, Duck,” Pa said. His voice was strange. “I couldn’t leave her there, and I didn’t know how to explain.” His gaze slid from Dad to Ziva. “Still don’t, apparently.”

Ziva nodded once.

“Oh, Jethro,” Dad sighed, putting a whole world of meaning into Pa’s name that Tim couldn’t begin to decipher even if the medicine wasn’t already taking hold, blanketing the edges of his mind and making it more difficult to think.

If he wasn’t already half-numb, and if he hadn’t already given up on any of this making sense, Tim would have been surprised at Ziva tearing her eyes away from Tony, looking straight at Abby and saying, calmly and clearly: “I am sorry.”

“Ah, hell, Ziva,” Pa said. “None of that was your fault.”

Ziva’s voice was still as clear as she turned those wide, dark eyes on Pa and said: “That has nothing to do with sorrow.”

“I should never have put you in that position,” he told her, “and I should never have forgotten.” He turned his head, looking up at Abby. “I should never have hidden the truth from you for so long,” he continued, gaze sliding behind Abby to Dad. “All of you.”

“It won’t kill you to say it, Dear,” Dad said, but there was steel in his voice.

Pa never even hesitated before he said: “I’m sorry.”

 

* * *

 

Alone was the last thing Tony wanted to be - needed to be, except nobody would listen - but alone in his room is how he ended up. The attempt to _talk_ to each other, for once, ended when Abby stormed up to her room and slammed the door behind her. At least they got most of the informative bits out of the way before that happened. Really, relative to how Tony thought it would go, the family conference went really well.

Abby still hid behind walls of brick and music and, in the seconds it took Tony to recover from her loud departure, Ziva had disappeared. Tony and Pa had worked out that she wasn’t in her room in the time it took Dad to get Tim to his room, and then Dad had put his foot down and sent Tony to his room and Pa to the basement, where - according to Dad - Ziva was, while Dad went upstairs to try and talk to Abby.

 _It is not about choosing between one another,_ Dad had said, with atypical exasperation, _and it is about time we have all learned that. I will explain this to Abigail; you see that Ziva is not alone; and you should rest._

 _I don’t want to,_ he’d tried saying, but sometimes Dad wouldn’t listen, couldn’t, like Pa when he was angry. Like everyone all the time, it felt like, sitting curled up in a corner he barely fit into, anymore, trying to claw his way out of feeling as if he might already be dead, for all that it seemed to matter to anyone.

Hadn’t it been better just that morning? Hadn’t it been better all the past week? He knew that, abstractly, for all that it was a struggle to remember: that just that morning, he was giving a damn about dying. That just last night, he had felt - how? Tony couldn’t remember. It was difficult enough to hold on to the knowledge that it had not always been this way, that he _had_ felt differently, and recently, and that he _had_ had reasons to feel that way, even if - curled in on himself and breathing careful and ragged - he couldn’t fathom what those reasons could have possibly been.

The thought formed slow and sluggish. It took several moments for it to become something that had sense enough to be verbalized. _A week ago,_ the words came, in Tony’s voice and in Tony’s mind but separate of him, somehow, _A week ago I wouldn’t be fighting this._ The thought repeated, stuck on a loop. _A week ago I wouldn’t have fought this, because I couldn’t._

Everything hurt, like bruises all the way to the bone. He still felt invisible, like everything and everyone could pass him by and never notice. But somehow, between one breath and the other, the hopelessness disappeared. Tony would have blinked in surprise if he could spare the strength. It had just _disappeared,_ went from all-consuming to nothing, like it had never existed. Like it had never been true.

 _And if it isn’t true..._ Tony did straighten, at that, slowly lifting his face from his knees. The room - his room - appeared strange and alien, as if he’d never seen anything like it, but most of Tony’s attention was turned inwards. Still slow, still fumbling, but aware in a way he hadn’t been a moment before, and aware of that fact.

 _A week ago I couldn’t do this._ And if he could do this, now, then something had to have happened. Something had to have gotten better, even if he couldn’t remember it, couldn’t _believe_ it. And if that was true -

Tony’s head dropped back to his knees, but his body wasn’t quite as tense. This could have an end that wasn’t a funeral home, then. That was nice.

It still hurt.

 

* * *

 

It took Abby two days before she finally managed to get her anger under some semblance of control. She still wasn’t happy that she’d been lied to for three years, even if it had been a lie of omission. Especially since it had been Pa doing the lying.

She pushed that thought down. Dwelling on it wouldn’t change anything, and Pa had already apologized to her - an actual, honest to goodness apology - so Abby couldn’t stay mad at him. But now she had her own apology to make, and she didn’t even need Dad’s heavy hints to know she did.

Fortunately, she had found the recipe for honey spice cake online and printed it out, and Ziva wouldn’t be home from school for another two hours, giving Abby free reign over the kitchen. She liked baking; it was rather like chemistry, in a lot of ways, mixing things together in precise amounts to get something new and different at the end. And she could lose herself in the chopping of apples and mixing of ingredients before the cake was ready to slide into the oven.

While the cake baked - and after she banished Tony, investigating the smell, from her kitchen - she mixed together a lemon glaze. She had timed everything carefully, so she could spoon the glaze onto the cake while it was still warm, letting the icing melt in just a little. She had two glasses of milk poured and waiting for when Ziva paused by the kitchen entrance, school bag still on her back.

“Hi,” Abby greeted her, hoping her smile came across as friendly and not malicious.

“Hi,” Ziva said, carefully. Her eyes were scanning the kitchen, though, taking in the scene.

“I made cake. It’s still warm. We probably have a few minutes before the boys come looking for some,” Abby said, cutting two slices and shifting them onto plates. She slid one across the counter to Ziva. “I hope you like it. Dad said you would. I improvised a bit, though.”

Ziva stepped closer to the counter, bag slung over one shoulder only, but she neither removed it nor sat down. “It smells right,” she said. “I mean, good. What did you improvise?”

“Well, I added some apples, and some walnuts - you’re not allergic, right? I mean, I didn’t think you were, but I wasn’t sure, so if you are, I can always make another one without the nuts, the boys will eat this one. And I added a lemon glaze, because, well, lemons and apples and whatnot, it all goes well together, you know?” Abby said. Ziva had that look on her face that said Abby was probably talking too quickly again, but Abby was nervous that Ziva would reject this cake like she’d rejected the last one Abby had tried to make for her. “You’ll at least try it, right?”

“It’s all right,” Ziva said, a little slowly. Her eyes were fixed on the slice Abby had pushed in her direction. “I... the apples, they’re not part of the recipe? And I think I never had it with the glazing.” She paused, and added, as if in an afterthought: “I’m not allergic.” She looked up at Abby, and said: “Thank you.”

“Sit,” Abby suggested. “I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but, well, I thought maybe...”

“Will you sit down as well?” Ziva asked.

Abby grinned, relieved. “Of course!” She took her plate and her glass of milk and went to the kitchen table. “I found a recipe online that had apples in it, actually, but the icing was my own addition.”

Ziva had dropped her bag, came around the counter and picked up her plate while Abby was talking. She came to the table and slid into a chair as Abby got to the part about the icing. She cut a piece of the corner with her fork and put it in her mouth.

Her eyes closed. For a second her expression cleared, guardedness gone and replaced by a distant echo of some other emotion.

Ziva swallowed. “It’s good,” she said. Her voice was different than Abby had ever heard it, too.

“I guess we’ll just have to tell Tony and Tim that I burnt it, then,” Abby said, conspiratorially.

Ziva opened her eyes and cut another piece, movement precise and efficient. “You did not taste it yet,” she pointed out. Abby considered for a moment making a joke about the cake being poisoned, but decided this wasn’t the right moment for such a thing. Instead, she took her own bite, smiling.

“I’m glad you like it.”

 

 

* * *

 

August 25 wasn’t going to pass unnoticed that year. Tony had known that. They all knew what it meant, now, or at least had a basic grasp on it: this day three years before, Ziva had lost a brother. This day one year before, she went seeking someone who would remember her brother as something other than a monster, and that had ended with Michael Rivkin and a world of hurt. August 25 was not going to pass unnoticed this year.

That worried Tony, actually, because while Ziva needed to not be alone with it - and had even admitted to that, which Tony found rather disturbing - he was pretty sure that the entire family focusing on her would end badly. Thankfully, though, the rest of the family seemed to get that, as well. Dad had gone to work as usual, and Tim wrangled Abby into _District 9_ and lunch a week in advance. That left Pa and Tony, neither of whom was likely to push too hard, and both of whom knew who had really killed Ari.

It wasn’t like there was a grave to visit, either. That was almost a relief, albeit a guilty one. He would’ve tried, for Ziva - because it was _her brother_ , and Tony, of all people, should understand that - but it was her brother who had killed _Kate,_ and that may never get any less impossible to grasp.

He hadn’t expected Pa to take the day off, and he certainly hadn’t expected for Pa to take Ziva and disappear immediately after breakfast. This left Tony home alone, and he didn’t dare go somewhere where there would be people and risk not being there when Pa and Ziva returned. That was what the DVDs were for. Not that he actually watched whatever it was he’d put on. He wasn’t even sure what it was. His concentration was shot.

He perked up at a familiar sound from the street and, indeed, the sound of Pa’s car’s engine was followed by the sound of the garage door opening and closing, the thumps of two car doors, and then - finally - the door to the house.

Ziva shot through the kitchen and straight upstairs before Tony could so much as call out an hello.

Pa followed at a more normal pace. Tony met him halfway, in the kitchen. Ziva’s sprint was one bad sign; Pa’s expression, worried and unsure, was another.

Tony’s stomach clenched.

Pa jerked his head in the direction of the stairs. Tony didn’t wait to see if any words would follow. He took the stairs two or three at a time, making it to Ziva’s room as quickly as possible.

She’d left her door open, but that said nothing. She was sitting curled up on the bed, near the head, back against the corner. Her hands were empty, but Tony knew what was under her pillow. His fear doubled. Her face was scrunched up, as if in pain, and her breathing was quick and shallow.

He pushed his fear down as far as it would go, and knocked on her door frame. “Hey. Can I come in?”

She didn’t respond.

He sighed, and moved cautiously, stopping where he could see her before sitting down on the edge of her bed, doing his best not to startle her.

She still didn’t move.

“Want to talk about it?” he offered. He hadn’t felt this helpless and unsure around Ziva in... well, he couldn’t quite remember how long. Even when things weren’t right between them, they had a routine, and this was certainly breaking from that routine.

She made some sort of noise in the back of her throat, not quite a whine but not remotely like words. She was still rigid, muscles so taut with tension they were nearly trembling.

“Hey, shh, c’mere, Kitten,” he said. The word was out of his mouth before he even thought about it, a relic of the past. It must have been the right thing to say, though, because she let go of her knees and tilted forward slightly, making it easier for him to pull her close for a hug.

“I’ve got you,” he said, rubbing soothing circles on her back. Her breathing changed into the hiccuping rhythm of sobbing, but no tears came. It was long minutes before she spoke.

“Pa made him a memory stone.”

Whatever he thought she might say, it wasn’t that. There was only one _him_ Ziva could be talking about, and Tony had to swallow hard past the tide of _something_ \- anger, hurt, betrayal, understanding - that flared inside him. Still, it took him almost a minute before he could form words, and his typical bad timing asserted itself with a joke.

“Well, now you’re stuck with the lot of us.”

She stiffened, but it was only for a second. The next, her fingers dug into his arm and back, holding on with everything she had.

 


End file.
